


Brothers

by cassie5squared



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Brotherhood, Brotherly Love, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Family Drama, Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5279468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassie5squared/pseuds/cassie5squared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A poem about the Black Brothers. After death, the two try to explain to each other how they feel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This piece was inspired by my recent re-reading of Deathly Hallows and by the characters' respective incarnations in Innocence Lost; their muns make the two brothers' relationship heartbreaking in a way I'd never seen before.

_I want to say I'm sorry that we never understood_   
_Each other in the living world, although we knew we should._   
_You were wild and free and untamed, went your way unchecked_   
_I was the family's golden boy, and paid them all respect._

_Your choice led you to run away, to fight the dark outside,_  
_I stayed and watched it from within, to keep the family pride._  
 _But it was more than I could bear, the hatred and the lies,_  
 _At last I thought that I could help… and that was why I died._

**I thought you were a silly kid, a hopeless little fool,**   
**Jumping at our parents' word and keeping all their rules**   
**But Slytherin or Gryffindor, I tried to just not care**   
**You were my little brother, for whom everything I'd dare.**

**I stood with my best friends as we took arms up in this war**   
**But still I feared you'd forgotten all that we had before**   
**I hoped to Merlin that the storm would pass over your head**   
**It nearly killed me too to hear the news that you were dead.**

_My body lay beneath a lake, but my soul was now free_   
_And in Death's world I wondered that you still could cry for me_   
_I wished I could have told you what I had tried to do_   
_But I had feared that it might put you in worse danger too._

_I watched as you were turned upon by your disloyal friend_   
_I begged of anyone who'd listen for your pain to end_   
_Your second brother joined me in the land beyond the veil_   
_And with his wife we raged at how injustice had prevailed._

**They say war has a brutal price, and so I found; the cost**   
**Was not just one or two things - no - it's /everything/ I lost**   
**My brothers and my hope, and last of all my freedom too**   
**Alone, I wondered if the price had been enough for you.**

**And still I never learned the truth of your lonely crusade,**   
**I called you foolish and I hoped the pain of loss would fade**   
**For fifteen years it gnawed my soul that it was far too late**   
**To turn the clock back and help you to change your final fate.**

_**But now, here in this quiet land beyond the deathly veil,** _   
_**I know the truth and those old arguments begin to pale.** _   
_**All the pain's behind us, and I can accept the cost,** _   
_**Because I have the brother back whom I thought I had lost.** _


End file.
